Just Cause rode a wave of open-world titles on its release, and although it was an impressive title that did function well, it was often passed over in favour of other open-world titles.

But this is all the more reason to be excited for Just Cause 2, as the developers were under even more pressure to wow gamers. And from the get-go it is clear that they have succeeded, as it's very difficult to extract yourself from this one.

Just Cause 2 is based on a fictional island of Panau located in Southeast Asia. Rico Rodriguez is back and is tasked with overthrowing the evil dictator of Panau. Its not going to be easy considering the level of military power that Pandak “Baby” Panay wields over the locals, but this is where the rival factions come in. Each wants to take down the government for their own selfish purposes, and only by playing them off will you get closer to your target.

Just Cause 2 starts with the protagonist leaping out of a helicopter over a simply enormous island. The sheer size of the world is staggering, and it's here that most newcomers will focus their praise. The island is styled after your typical South Pacific setting, which will make most of us feel relatively at home. The lush forests, beautiful meadows and tremendous mountains are recreated exceptionally well, particularly the gorgeous sunsets and the way grass and flowers fly through the air as you tear through a meadow in a tuk-tuk. The textures are gorgeous to the smallest of details.

The map itself is over 1,000 square kilometres, and it really makes you work to get from one side to the other. Fortunately the world is littered (and we do mean littered) with things to do and objectives to complete. Beaches, cities, villages, mountains and military bases are everywhere. The open environment allows you to go anywhere on a whim, even totally ignoring the mission structure if you feel like it. Throw in a day and night cycle, and this game really feels a little like heaven.

Thanks to Rico’s re-deployable parachute, you coast in to land on your first target; some data chips which were lost from the helicopter. Rico’s chute can be dropped and redeployed almost instantly which makes for great fun, especially with your grappling hook, which can allow you to slingshot around. That said, we prefer to ride in style. For getting around the island Rico has an exceptional range of vehicles at hand, from tuk-tuks to planes, helicopters, motorbikes and just plain old cars. They all drive totally different and in this respect Just Cause 2 feels significantly better than its predecessor. The vehicles react dynamically to the surfaces you are driving on, and there isn’t anything quite like racing off a cliff face and leaping off the back of your motorcycle only to have it fly to the bottom and explode in impressive style. The only slightly painful aspect of the aerial vehicles is the lack of a trim control, making flying the planes quite challenging. That said they are unlikely to be your vehicle of choice when attacking a government compound.

In order to take down the island's military, Rico is going to need a considerable armament. Unfortunately he is working on the down-low this time and doesn’t have support from the agency. The only way he can attain weapons and vehicles is by taking them, or by making use of black-market contacts. The more you play, the greater access you will get to more intricate weapons. All the weapons and vehicles can also be upgraded allowing them to perform their tasks with even greater efficiency. Pistols, rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, C4 - it's all here and it's all extremely entertaining to use, particularly with the wonderful effects and rag-doll animation that are used for the enemies.

One of Rico’s most useful tools which we already touched on is his grappling hook. Rico will need this to scale many of the buildings, or hijack helicopters, for example. A really fantastic feature though is that Rico can now grapple two things together, allowing him to grapple a helicopter to a passing vehicle, or to grapple a chasing vehicle to a nearby tree. Both of which, naturally, will result in an enormous level of mayhem.

The mission structure is totally open, allowing you to undertake missions when and if you like. You need to undertake faction missions to progress the main storyline, and to open up missions you need to help the factions destroy military and government targets such as fuel depots, and transmission towers. That being said, this is largely our only gripe with the title and that is that on occasion knowing what to do to continue the storyline is a tad confusing, primarily due to a lack of explanation from the GUI. This may have more to do with our review copies not coming with any form of instructions (a sadly all-too common occurrence) so here’s hoping the full release booklet contains all this information. A big plus here though is simply the sheer amount of gameplay you're getting - we played for a long time and only very slowly did the percentage completed tick over. At a guess you’ll be playing this for over 30 hours, if not significantly more.

We reviewed both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 version, and though we couldn’t do considerable play-throughs of both versions, we were able to gain some impressions. Having installed both versions we found the Xbox 360 version had a better draw distance and smoother frame-rate which made a bit of a difference. It won’t be hugely noticeable but its worth thinking about, and at the end of the day it may just come down to preference as in this instance we preferred the look of the 360 version. The PS3 version reportedly allows you to upload gameplay clips directly to the net though which certainly would be a great feature if you are wanting to show off some of your more extreme stunts and activities.

Just Cause 2 doesn’t include a multiplayer, which is fine by us considering what has been achieved in the singleplayer. It's hard to remember a game that provides this level of enjoyment just exploring all the sandbox elements. Even the AI has had a bit of a work-over from the original Just Cause - the AI will have a pretty good awareness of the environment, using cover to take pot shots as well as circling around. The driving skill of the AI is also pretty great, but not too great to prevent them from hurtling into oncoming traffic on occasion. Through the excellent use of in-game sounds you’ll have a relatively good idea of what they are planning, which gives you a bit of a heads-up. The game will also scales the AI difficulty as you progress through so that it matches your skill level and provides a decent challenge. It's an aspect of the gameplay that is very noticeable, and it certainly helped us ease into the role of Rico Rodriguez.

Just Cause 2 is an amazing title and certainly looking to be one of the best sand-box games of the year. It may not reproduce Grand Theft Auto IV's immersive storyline, but the level of fun to be had in Just Cause 2 is virtually unparalleled.

This is no time to be sitting on the fence, Just Cause 2 is simply too good to pass up.